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Pages

January 29, 2016

If no one meant for it to happen, should someone be guilty? Analise:
She knows the roads and feels secure riding her bike. Laurie: When asked out by
Quin, Laurie is happy. Then his car hits something. Later, Laurie realizes
there is a way to get Quin to date her. Quin: Because Quin is athletically
gifted, his father expects him to get a scholarship. Nothing is to get in his
way of college, athletics, money, and success. When he realizes what has
happened, he decides he must not let it ruin his future. Jeremy: It's been the
perfect relationship with Analise. Little does Jeremy realize that the
beautiful wood he carves will be used for something for Analise. As the lives
of people who never wanted to hurt others intersect, harsh realities of choices
that cannot be changed are explored.

This book was a random pickup while I was at a discount book
store. I had no expectations going into it. I picked it up for $2 and it looked
somewhat interesting.

The good news: it was only $2. The bad news, for the author
& publisher I guess, that is all that I would ever spend on this book.

Let me say this – It was not a bad book. I didn’t hate it.

BUT.

It was just very typical. It was a very average young adult
novel that has been done multiple times. It was basically a lesser version of
If I Stay with a few tweaks to the story line.

The random high school popularity storyline annoyed me and
kind of made me want to throw my book at the wall. SPOILER ALERT: withholding
the truth about the accident so this girl could get a boyfriend that she didn’t
even like was so dumb. Pro-tip: don’t do that.

If you find this book discounted somewhere and have nothing
else to read, you may not hate it. Otherwise, don’t even bother. Read If I Stay
instead.

January 28, 2016

Do you remember the hospital, Colton? Sonja said. Yes,
mommy, I remember, he said. That’s where the angels sang to me.

When Colton Burpo made it through an emergency appendectomy,
his family was overjoyed at his miraculous survival. What they weren’t
expecting, though, was the story that emerged in the months that followed a story
as beautiful as it was extraordinary, detailing their little boy s trip to
heaven and back.

Colton, not yet four years old, told his parents he left his
body during the surgery and authenticated that claim by describing exactly what
his parents were doing in another part of the hospital while he was being
operated on. He talked of visiting heaven and relayed stories told to him by
people he met there whom he had never met in life, sharing events that happened
even before he was born. He also astonished his parents with descriptions and
obscure details about heaven that matched the Bible exactly, though he had not
yet learned to read.

With disarming innocence and the plainspoken boldness of a
child, Colton tells of meeting long-departed family members. He describes
Jesus, the angels, how really, really big God is, and how much God loves us.
Retold by his father, but using Colton s uniquely simple words, Heaven Is for
Real offers a glimpse of the world that awaits us, where as Colton says, Nobody
is old and nobody wears glasses.

I went into this book not really knowing what to expect. Books
about religion can sometimes be kind of preachy and pushy. Thankfully, this
book wasn’t any of those things. I felt that it wasn’t at least.

I think it is a book that both believers and non-believers
could enjoy. It is a sweet story about a little boy and what he saw while on
the verge of death.

I think it was very well written, and there were some parts
that made me laugh out loud. There was personality in the writing, which I wasn’t
completely expecting.

It is pretty short, so it could be a nice weekend afternoon
read if you haven’t picked it up yet.

If you are into memoirs, I would suggest giving this one a
shot.

4/5 Stars

Memorable Quotes: “Pastors are supposed to be unshakable
pillars of faith, right? But at that moment, my faith was hanging by a tattered
thread and fraying fast.”

“If you haven’t heard your preschooler tell you he was dead,
I don’t recommend it.”

January 27, 2016

Callie cuts herself. Never too deep, never enough to die.
But enough to feel the pain. Enough to feel the scream inside.

Now she's at Sea Pines, a "residential treatment
facility" filled with girls struggling with problems of their own. Callie
doesn't want to have anything to do with them. She doesn't want to have
anything to do with anyone. She won't even speak.

But Callie can only stay silent for so long...

This book has been out for awhile. I remember always seeing
it on shelves when I was at various bookstores, but I never picked it up. I’m
sure pretty much everyone has read this except for me, but I finally caught up
to the bandwagon.

That said, it wasn’t anything like I thought it would be.
Except, I don’t really know what exactly I was expecting. With Callie not
talking for a lot of the book, I figured that something really terrible had
happened to her that was going to come out later in the book. I found myself
waiting and waiting, and that HUGE reveal never came. Maybe it was the way is
was written and not her actions themselves that made me expect something like
that.

I guess that maybe it ended like up that because it is sort
of accurate for some mental health cases though. Nothing huge has to happen in
order to cause a mental health episode. It could be something small, or have no
external trigger at all.

That is why I am leaning more towards the way this story was
written leading me to think that something super catastrophic had occurred.

Overall, though, I did enjoy the book. It was a bit
different because it was separated only into 3 parts instead of multiple
chapters. It is a pretty short book, so I can see why that was the case.

Im starting to think this review isn’t helpful at all, but
this book just sort of threw me off. . .